11/24/22
Newletter168
The Crack of Dawn
In 1935 when Hollywood decided to make a film of Lloyd Douglas’s book, Magnificent Obsession – a truly silly story of a rich playboy who gets drunk, runs his car over a woman causing her to become blind, feels so guilty he goes to medical school, becomes a surgeon, then cures the woman’s blindness – they cast an unknown actor in the lead opposite the big star, Irene Dunne. His name was Robert Taylor. The movie was a smash success and Robert Taylor immediately became a big star. When they decided to remake the movie in 1954, they followed the same scheme: they cast the big star, Jane Wyman, in the lead, and cast an unknown actor opposite her named Rock Hudson. Just like before, the film was a smash success and Rock Hudson immediately became a star. History repeats itself.
If you ask, which movie actress married into European royalty? The obvious answer is Grace Kelly, who married Prince Rainier of Monaco and became a princess. However, 25 years earlier, Gloria Swanson married Henri, Marquis de la Falaise, and became Marquise Gloria Swanson. That marriage lasted for five years.
Gloria Swanson was a fascinating character. In 1915 she talked her way into movies at the age of fifteen, got an extra part, and was so pretty, enthusiastic and charming, that by the end of the year she co-starred in Sweedie Goes to College with her future first husband Wallace Beery. Gloria was 4’11” and 90-pounds; Berry was 6’2” and 250-pounds. Wallace Beery and Swanson married on Gloria’s 17th birthday on March 27, 1916. On March 28, the day after her wedding night, she decided to get divorced.
From 1918 to 1928 little Gloria Swanson was a superstar. She was a bigger star than any star in Hollywood right now. Swanson was a much bigger star in the 1920s than Marilyn Monroe was in the 1950s. When sound came in 1929, unlike her direct competition, Greta Garbo, who had a thick Swedish accent and had great difficulty adapting, Gloria had a terrific voice and no problem delivering dialogue. But she was already past her prime and wasn’t getting very good parts anymore, so with no regrets at all, she happily chucked Hollywood (where she had worked non-stop since she was 15), moved to NYC, didn’t retire, took up sculpting, appeared in plays, had one of the early TV shows, The Gloria Swanson Hour in 1948, then in 1950 made her greatest film, Sunset Blvd. As I’ve mentioned before, I will be forever pissed-off that she didn’t get Best Actress in 1950. It went to Judy Holliday playing a dumb blonde in Born Yesterday?!?! I could scream.
Anyway, when I was about 12 and saw Sunset Blvd. on TV for the first time, I was not only severely impressed and deeply moved, I thought Gloria Swanson was about 70. She was in fact 49.
As a postscript: the movie that destroyed Gloria Swanson’s production company, her finances, and her love of movies, but not her glorious spirit, was Queen Kelly directed by Erich von Stroheim, and produced by Swanson and her then lover, Joseph P. Kennedy, father of John, Bobby and Ted Kennedy. The movie was total production disaster, went, way, way, way over budget, von Stroheim was fired and was so blackballed that he never got to direct again. Queen Kelly was never released in the United States. It came out in a cobbled together version in Europe and South America.
Erich von Stroheim plays Max the chauffeur in Sunset Blvd. As Gloria Swanson at 49 years old, is smoking and watching one of her old silent movies, it’s footage from Queen Kelly. And Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond says, “I am big, it’s the pictures that got small.”
And a new day dawns.
Thank you, August. Happy Thanksgiving.
Great read as always. Hoping you're enjoying turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin-flavored weed, and that you have some grasp of how thankful your fans are for you!